Activities in Washington DC Give Us Hope of
America's New Energy Future

At
the same time, there are glimmers of hope and proactive proposals gaining
momentum on the Hill.

Prominent
figures in Washington, like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, have called for
an Apollo Project for Energy. The project echoes Apollo Alliance's call for a
massive commitment to support research and development necessary to develop
alternative energy sources to free us from foreign oil by 2020.

Senator
Reid joins a chorus of voices calling for proactive approaches to dealing with
our perilous dependence on foreign oil. Representative Jay Inslee has proposed
the New Apollo Energy Act. The act will invest in America's new energy future
and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by including incentives for consumers
to purchase fuel efficient vehicles. The act seeks to produce notable
reductions in domestic oil consumption -- cuts of 600,000 barrels a day by
2010, 1,700,000 barrels by 2015, and 3,000,000 barrels by 2020.

Senator
Joe Lieberman put forward a slate of legislative solutions to our energy crisis
by unveiling a plan to break America's dependence on foreign oil. Senator
Lieberman proposes to push the development and marketing of hybrid technologies
and alternative fuel vehicles, and providing tax credits to help American
manufacturers compete in this emerging market.

Furthermore,
Senator Barack Obama and Senator Richard G. Lugar are sponsoring a briefing on
the future of the U.S. automotive industry in an era of historically high oil
and gasoline prices. You can participate in this briefing tomorrow, Thursday,
October 13th at 2:00pm EST at 902 Hart Senate Office Building.

Leadership
on the Hill reflects what the public knows: that the time for a solution is
now. A recent poll by the Democracy Corps illustrated the public's continuing
support for an Apollo-like crash program to achieve energy independence.
According to their poll, two of the most strongly supported policy proposals in
response to Hurricane Katrina were to:

1.
Take steps to reduce our dependence on oil.

2. Make a massive commitment, similar to the Apollo
project that put a man on the moon, to support the research and development
necessary to develop alternative energy sources to free us from dependence on
foreign oil within ten years.

In
the recent cover article of The Nation, Robert L. Borosage (Apollo Alliance
Steering Committee Member) calls for a "real contract with America"
in which Congress unleashes new energy for America. "In contrast to the
Big Oil policies of the Administration that leave us more dependent on foreign
supplies, pledge to launch a concerted drive for energy independence like the
one called for by the Apollo Alliance. Create new jobs by investing in
efficiency and alternative energy sources, helping America capture the growing
green industries of the future."

The
Wardenclyffe Tower Centennial (1903-2003) is an opportunity to
celebrate a monument to Nikola Tesla’s visionary genius. Recently, a resurgence
of interest from prominent physicists has focused on the unusual method of
pulsing a broadband Tesla coil at a repetition rate of 8 Hz to resonate with
the Earth's Schumann cavity.[1][1] Nikola Tesla, the father of
AC electricity, is responsible for recognizing that an atmospheric and a
terrestrial storage battery already exists everywhere on earth, for the benefit
of mankind. This is perhaps the “wheelwork of nature” that Tesla was referring
to.[2][2] A century later, only a
handful of visionary scientists recognize the untapped renewable reservoir of terawatts
of electrical power (3000 gigawatts) that sits dormant above us, waiting to
be utilized.

Background

In 2001,
the Bush-mandated National Transmission Grid Study (NTGS 2001) was designed to
identify the major transmission bottlenecks across the U.S. and identify
technical and economic issues resulting from these transmission constraints.
With deregulation of U.S. utilities and the lack of jurisdiction for the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the U.S. is fighting an electrical
energy crisis which right now, costs consumers hundreds of millions of dollars
annually due to interregional transmission congestion. There is no longer any
economic incentive nor any FERC eminent domain for states to provide
rights-of-way, besides the lack of Federal compensation to utilities to build new
transmission lines.

Historically, the creation of electrical utilities was beset with scandal, such
as the six years of Congressional hearings starting in 1928 in which “thousands
of pages of testimony revealed a systematic, covert attempt to shape opinion in
favor of private utilities, in which half truths and at times outright lies
presented municipal systems in a consistently bad light.”[3][3] Today, US AID funds the U.S.
Energy Association to train utility representatives from the former Russian states
on how to reliably monitor electricity usage and collect money from customers
in their respective countries, while those economically challenged people
struggle for sufficient wages.

At a
Washington DC conference which this author attended, called “Implementing a
National Energy Strategy: Breaking Down the Barriers” also sponsored by the US
Energy Association (12/01), only the depressing news about unresolved US
electricity headaches were discussed. Editor of Energy Daily, Llewelyn King finally concluded, “We
are using 19th century technology for electrical transmission.”
He then called for a paradigm shift toward new technology and cited the
“monster infrastructure problems” within the U.S. as compared to the developing
countries. A year later (June, 2003) the US DOE held an emergency meeting with
utility heads as a natural gas crisis looms from the lack of diversification of
new electrical power generation facilities. “Innovation in new technology and
renewable sources are needed in the long term to improve the environment and
meet rising demand,” summarized an Investors
Business Daily editor about the crisis.[4][4]

In November, 2002, the
American Council for the United Nations University called for wireless
energy transmission to circumvent the need for transmission lines as
part of their “Millennium Project.” In cooperation with the National Science
Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), the
beaming of microwave energy and the creation of a world energy organization was
seen to actively address the 2020 challenges to global electricity supply,
especially in areas of massive urban concentrations.[5][5]

In 1940,
“the United States prided itself on using half the world’s electricity.”[6][6] Since 1980, the U.S. has
also doubled its dependence on foreign oil and doubled its electrical
transmission grid inefficiency. From 31 Quads (quadrillion BTUs) generated, a
full 2/3
is totally wastedin “conversion losses” with only about 11
Quads (3.7 trillion kWh) delivered to the end-user.[7][7] Instead of trying to build 2
power plants per week (at 300 MW each) for the next 20 years (only to have a
total of additional 6 trillion kWh available by 2020), as the Bush-Cheney
Administration wants to do, we simply need to eliminate the 7 trillion kWhof
conversion losses in our present electricity generation modality.

History of Tesla’s Wireless Energy

The
fateful decision in 1905 by J. P. Morgan to abandon Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower
project on Long Island (after investing $150,000), was a result of learning
that it would be designed mainly for wireless
transmission of electrical power, rather than telegraphy. No more money was
forthcoming for the project that Morgan initiated, even when the equipment cost
alone cost about $200,000. Morgan believed that he would “have nothing to sell
except antennas (and refused) to contribute to that charity.”[8][8] Tesla tried and tried for
years until in 1917 the U.S. government blew up the abandoned Wardenclyffe
tower because suspected German spies were seen “lurking” around it. With Edison
as his willing ally, Morgan even publicly discredited Tesla’s name, so that all
of the five school textbook publishers of the time removed any reference to
him. Any wonder why even today, 100 years later, hardly anyone knows who Tesla
is?

The rest
of this article will present a physics and electrical engineering argument for
a subsequently forgotten engineering alternative for energy generation and
transmission.

As Tesla experimented with a 1.5 MW system in 1899
at Colorado Springs, he was amazed to find that pulses of electricity he sent
out passed across the entire globe returned with “undiminished strength.”
He said, “It was a result so unbelievable that the revelation at first almost
stunned me.”[9][9] This verified the tremendous efficiency of his
peculiar method of pumping current into a spherical ball to charge it up before
discharging it as a pulse of electrical energy, a “longitudinal” acoustic-type of compression wave, rather
than an electromagnetic Hertzian-type of transverse wave. It was therefore,
more akin to electrostatic discharge than wave mechanics.

Tesla also
planned to include a stationary resonant
wave creation globally, within the earth-ionosphere cavity, as part of the
wireless transmission of power. Examining the pair of 1900 patents #645,576 and
#649,621 each using the same figure on the first page, we find in the first
patent that Tesla has designed a quarter-wave antenna (50 miles of secondary
coil wire for a 200 mile long wavelength). More importantly is the sphere on
the top which is supposed to be a conductive surface on a balloon raised high
enough to be radiating in “rarefied air.”[10][10]

As
Tesla states,

“That communication without wires to any point of the globe is
practical with such apparatus would need no demonstration, but through a
discovery which I made I obtained absolute certainty. Popularly explained it is
exactly this: When we raise the voice and hear an echo in reply, we know that
the sound of the voice must have reached a distant wall, or boundary, and must
have been reflected from the same. Exactly as the sound, so an electrical wave
is reflected, and the same evidence which is afforded by an echo is offered by
an electrical phenomena known as a ‘stationary’ wave – that is, a wave with
fixed nodal and ventral regions. Instead of sending sound vibrations toward a
distant wall, I have sent electrical vibrations toward the remote boundaries of
the earth, and instead of the wall, the earth has replied. In place of an echo,
I have obtained a stationary electrical wave, a wave reflected from afar.”[11][11]

Nikola Tesla's discovery of pulsed propagation of energy does not resemble the
standard transverse electromagnetic waves so familiar to electrical engineers
everywhere. Many engineers and physicists have dismissed Tesla's wireless
energy transmission as unscientific without examining the unusual
characteristics and benefits of longitudinal waves, which are the z-component
solutions of Maxwell equations. Tesla wrote, “That electrical energy can be
economically transmitted without wires to any terrestrial distance, I have
unmistakably established in numerous observations, experiments and
measurements, qualitative and quantitative. These have demonstrated that it is
practicable to distribute power from a central plant in unlimited amounts, with
a loss not exceeding a small fraction of one per cent in the transmission, even
to the greatest distance, twelve thousand miles – to the opposite end of the
globe.”[12][12]

Tesla was
an electrical genius who revolutionized our world with AC power in a way that
DC power could never have accomplished, since the resistance of any
transmission lines, (except perhaps, superconductive ones), is prohibitive
for direct current. He deserved much better treatment from the tycoons of his
age, than to spend the last 40 years of his life in abject poverty. However, he
was too much of a gentleman to hold a grudge. Instead, regarding the magnifying
transmitter, Tesla wrote in his autobiography, “I am unwilling to accord to
some small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted
my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease.
My project was retarded by laws of nature. The
world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws
will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.”[13][13]

Tesla’s World System

Tesla’s
“World System” was conceptually based on three inventions of his:

3.The Wireless System (efficient transmission of electrical energy without wires)

Tesla states, “The first
World System power plant can be put in operation in nine months. With this
power plant it will be practicable to attain electrical activities up to 10
million horsepower (7.5 billion watts), and it is designed to serve for as many
technical achievements as are possible without due expense.”[14][14] Tesla’s calculated power levels are conservatively
estimated and recently updated with contemporary physics calculations by Dr.
Elizabeth Rauscher. For example, Professor Rauscher shows that the earth’s
ionosphere and magnetosphere contains sufficient potential energy, at least 3 billion kilowatts (3 terawatts)
respectively, so that the resonant excitation of the earth-ionosphere
cavity can reasonably be expected to increase the amplitude of natural
“Schumann” frequencies, facilitating the capture of useful electrical power.
Tesla knew that the earth could be treated as one big spherical conductor and
the ionosphere as another bigger spherical conductor, so that together they
have parallel plates and thus, comprise a “spherical capacitor.”[15][15] Rauscher calculates the capacitance to be about
15,000 microfarads for the complete earth-ionosphere cavity capacitor. In 1952,
W. O. Schumann predicted the “self-oscillations” of the conducting sphere of
the earth, surrounded by an air layer and ionosphere, without knowing that
Tesla had found the earth’s fundamental frequency fifty years earlier.[16][16]

"All
that is necessary," says Dr. James Corum, is that Tesla’s transmitter
power and carrier frequency be capable of round-the-world propagation." In
fact, Tesla (in the L.A. Times, Dec.
1904) stated, "With my transmitter I actually sent electrical vibrations
around the world and received them again, and I then went on to develop my
machinery." Dr. Corum notes in an article on the ELF (extremely low
frequency) oscillator of Tesla’s that the tuned circuit of Tesla’s magnifying
transmitter was the whole earth-ionosphere cavity.[17][17]

Corum explains that a
mechanical analog of the lumped circuit Tesla coil is an easier model for
engineers to understand.[18][18] From a mechanical
engineering viewpoint, the "magnifying factor" can be successfully
applied to such a circuit. "The circuit is limited only by the circuit
resistance. At resonance, the current through the circuit rises until the
voltage across the resistance is equal to the source voltage. This circuit was
a source of deep frustration to Edison because voltmeter readings taken around
the loop did not obey Kirchoff's laws!" As a result, Edison claimed such a
circuit was only good for electrocution chairs.

Earth’s Renewable Energy

Tesla’s world
system activates the earth’s renewable electrical storage battery which
normally sits dormant except during lightning strikes. Regarding simply the
electrostatic energy storage capacity of the ionosphere, Dr. Oleg Jefimenko,
author of Electrostatic Motors,
explains that during one electric storm, the atmospheric electric field
dissipates at least 0.2 terawatts (billion kilowatts), indicating that the
entire earth must have even more total available energy.[19][19]

Furthermore, the power loss experienced by Tesla’s pulsed, electrostatic
discharge mode of propagation was less than 5% over 25,000 miles. Dr. Van
Voorhies states, "...path losses are 0.25 dB/Mm at 10 Hz," which is
so minimal it is difficult for engineers to believe, who are used to transverse
waves, a resistive medium, and line-of-sight propagation modes that can
dissipate 10 dB/km at 5 MHz.[20][20] The capacitive dome
of the Wardenclyffe Tower, like the conductive balloon of Tesla’s ‘576 patent,
is a key to the understanding of the longitudinal waves. Dr. Rauscher quotes
Tesla, "Later he compared it to a Van de Graaff generator. He also
explained the purpose of Wardenclyffe...'one
does not need to be an expert to understand that a device of this kind is not a
producer of electricity like a dynamo, but merely a receiver or collector with
amplifying qualities.'"[21][21]

Only a few
great physicists like Drs. Elizabeth Rauscher, James Corum, and Konstantin
Meyl,[22][22] have realized that Tesla was
very practical when he proposed the resonant generation and wireless
transmission of useful electrical power. Tesla’s knowledge of atmospheric
electricity transduction was so extensive and reliable that Jim Corum, who has
been funded to continue Tesla’s work, recently told me, “You just have to do
exactly what Telsa did and you will consistently get the same results he did.”[23][23] After returning from his
experiments at Colorado Springs in 1900, Nikola Tesla stated, “If we use fuel to get our power, we are
living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and
wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming
generations.”[24][24] In view of our present
fossil-fuel-caused global warming, Tesla seems very prophetic from his vantage
point of a century ago.

High Transmission Integrity and LowLoss

Tesla
states, “As to the transmission of power through space, that is a project which
I considered absolutely certain of success long since. Years ago I was in the
position to transmit wireless power to any distance without limit other than
that imposed by the physical dimensions of the globe. In my system it makes no
difference what the distance is. The efficiency of the transmission can be as
high as 96 or 97 per cent, and there are practically no losses except such as
are inevitable in the running of the machinery. When there is no receiver
there is no energy consumption anywhere. When the receiver is put on, it draws
power. That is the exact opposite of the Hertz-wave system. In that
case, if you have a plant of 1,000 horsepower (750 kW), it is radiating all the
time whether the energy is received or not; but in my system no power is lost.
When there are no receivers, the plant consumes only a few horsepower necessary
to maintain the vibration; it runs idle, as the Edison plant when the lamps and
motors are shut off.”[25][25]

These
amazing facts are explained by Corum(s) and Spainol, “…the distinction between
Tesla’s system and ‘Hertzian’ waves is to be clearly understood. Tesla, and
others of his day, used the term ‘Hertzian waves’ to describe what we call
today, energy transfer by wireless transverse electromagnetic (TEM)
radiation…no one wants to stand in front of a high power radar antenna. For
these, E and H are in phase, the power flow is a ‘real’ quantity (as
opposed to reactive power), and the surface integral of E x H (Poynting vector)
is nonzero. The case is not so simple in an unloaded power system, an RF
transformer with a tuned secondary, or with a cavity resonator. In these
situations, the fields are in phase quadrature, the circulating power is
reactive and the average Poynting flux is zero – unless a load is applied. They deliver no power without a
resistive load. These are clearly the power systems which Tesla created. The
polyphase power distribution system was created by him in the 1880s and
inaugurated at Niagara Falls in 1895. The RF transformer was invented and
patented by him in the 1890s. Terrestrial resonances he experimentally
discovered at the turn of the century. And, for the next 40 years he tried to
bring through to commercial reality this global power system. Today, millions
of us have working scale models of it in our kitchens, while the larger version
sits idle.”[26][26] Note for a spherical, electrostatic pulse
discharge, E is radial and H is helical since J is radial (longitudinal
or irrotational current).[27][27] This is a total anathema to transverse wave
physics textbook images of E and H which are normally perpendicular to each
other.

Biological and Economic Impact

Another
common criticism of the Tesla wireless power system is regarding its possible
biological effects. Calculating the circulating reactive power, Corum(s) and
Spainol find a density of a microVAR per cubic meter at 7.8 Hz, which is
quite small, while it is well-known that such a frequency is very biologically
compatible.[28][28] The authors also look at the
present 100 V/m earth-ionosphere field and again find that raising it by a
factor of 4 to 10 will pose no ill effects. (Thunderstorms do it all of the
time around the world.)

In terms of economic theory,
many countries will benefit from this service. Only private, dispersed
receiving stations will be needed. Just like television and radio, a single
resonant energy receiver is required, which may eventually be built into
appliances, so no power cord will be necessary! Just think: monthly electric
utility bills from old-fashioned, fossil-fueled, lossy electrified wire-grid
delivery services will be optional, much like “cable TV” is today. In the 21st
century, “Direct TV” is the rage, which is an exact parallel of Tesla’s “Direct
Electricity.”

Let
us fulfill this prophesy of Tesla, making it a triumphal success, by
supporting a philanthropic, international wireless power station installed on a
remote island to electrify the whole world. The benefits, immediately making
direct electricity available everywhere, are too numerous to count. With
California electric rates up to 15 cents per kWh (double the US average) the
old-fashioned transmission grid method is becoming too expensive to maintain.

Become
educated about Tesla's wireless energy transmission discovery at www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.org
and the Wardenclyffe Tower potential for transforming the world’s generation
and delivery of electricity.Read Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla’s
Science of Energy for more details about this and other fascinating aspects
of Tesla’s inventions.

About the Author

Thomas
Valone received his Master’s in Physics from the State University of NY at
Buffalo (1984) and his Ph.D. in General Engineering from Kennedy-Western
University (2003). He taught physics, AC electricity, microprocessors, digital
logic and environmental science at Erie Community College in NYS (1982-1987),
and is the author of several books and about 100 articles and reports.
Presently, Dr. Valone is President of Integrity Research Institute a non-profit
organization dedicated to energy research and public education. www.IntegrityResearchInstitute.orgEmail:
iri@erols.com

3) The latest nanotech device: Venetian blinds

A molecule that flips its
arms like the slats on a Venetian blind might in future find uses in computer
displays, computer memory, or even windows that become tinted at the flick of a
switch.

Molecules whose shapes or
movements can be easily controlled are important for nanotechnology. One kind
that promises to be useful are those shaped in a helix that can be made to
reverse its direction. When that happens the molecule is said to reverse its
chirality.

Researchers at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh and Vanderbilt University in Nashville,
Tennessee, were working with a helical polymer called polyguanidine.
Polyguanidine actually switched chirality so easily that it was difficult to
control. To try to make the helices more stable, the researchers stuck side
chains of anthracene along the helical backbone.

One characteristic of
chiral molecules is that they are optically active - when polarised light
passes through them in solution, its plane is rotated one way or another,
depending on the chirality of the molecules.

Switch point

The researchers found the
new molecule rotated light, as expected, but that the direction of rotation
switched depending on the solvent used. Raising or lowering the temperature of
the solution above or below 38.5°C also caused a switch.

At first the researchers
thought the chirality of the molecules was changing. But now they have
discovered that the helices are staying put. Instead it is the anthracene side
chains that are moving back and forth in unison, like shutters being opened and
closed, or Venetian blinds being flipped up and down.

The flipping occurs because
the molecule has two different states - one high-energy and one
low-energy – and these are stable at different temperatures and in
solvents with different polarities.

Prasad Polavarapu, a
chemist at Vanderbilt and part of the research team, says the shutter action
might some day make the molecule useful as a nanoscale engine, part of a
computer display screen, or as a component in a computer memory. The molecule
might also be attached to a glass substrate and used to instantly tint a
window.

4) Danish Researchers Reveal New Hydrogen Storage Technology

Scientists at
the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an
important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively
stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.

With the
new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the
environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel,
but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable.
Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers
world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark,
DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables
storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

“Should you drive a car 600
km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with
a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be
stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen,
Department of Chemistry at DTU.

The hydrogen tablet is safe
and inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other hydrogen
storage technologies. You can literally carry the material in your pocket
without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists
solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a
combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the
DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet,
hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is
released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the
tablet is empty, you merely give it a “shot” of ammonia and it is ready for use
again.

“The technology is a step
towards making the society independent of fossil fuels” says Professor Jens
Nørskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He, Claus Hviid
Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the
five researchers behind the invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are
numerous. It is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy sources,
e.g. wind power.

“We have a new solution to
one of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel. And we need new
energy technologies – oil and gas will not last, and without energy, there is
no modern society”, says Jens Nørskov.

Together with DTU and SeeD
Capital Denmark, the researchers have founded the company Amminex A/S, which
will focus on the further development and commercialization of the technology.

Human
hands glow, but fingernails release the most light, according to a recent study
that found all parts of the hand emit detectable levels of light.

The
findings support prior research that suggested most living things, including
plants, release light. Since disease and illness appear to affect the strength
and pattern of the glow, the discovery might lead to less-invasive ways of
diagnosing patients.

Mitsuo
Hiramatsu, a scientist at the Central Research Laboratory at Hamamatsu
Photonics in Japan, who led the research, told Discovery News that the hands
are not the only parts of the body that shine light by releasing photons, or
tiny, energized increments of light.

"Not
only the hands, but also the forehead and bottoms of our feet emit
photons," Hiramatsu said, and added that in terms of hands "the
presence of photons means that our hands are producing light all of the
time."

The
light is invisible to the naked eye, so Hiramatsu and his team used a powerful
photon counter to "see" it.

The
detector found that fingernails release 60 photons, fingers release 40 and the
palms are the dimmest of all, with 20 photons measured.

The
findings are published in the current Journal of Photochemistry and
Photobiology B: Biology.

Hiramatsu
is not certain why fingernails light up more than the other parts of the hand,
but he said, "It may be because of the optical window property of
fingernails," meaning that the fingernail works somewhat like a prism to
scatter light.

To find
out what might be creating the light in the first place, he and colleague
Kimitsugu Nakamura had test subjects hold plastic bottles full of hot or cold
water before their hand photons were measured. The researchers also pumped
nitrogen or oxygen gas into the dark box where the individuals placed their
hands as they were being analyzed.

Warm
temperatures increased the release of photons, as did the introduction of
oxygen. Rubbing mineral oil over the hands also heightened light levels.

Based on
those results, the scientists theorize the light "is a kind of
chemiluminescence," a luminescence based on chemical reactions, such as
those that make fireflies glow. The researchers believe 40 percent of the light
results from the chemical reaction that constantly occurs as our hand skin reacts
with oxygen.

Since
mineral oil, which permeates into the skin, heightens the light, they also now
think 60 percent of the glow may result from chemical reactions that take place
inside the skin.

Fritz-Albert
Popp, a leading world expert on biologically related photons at The
International Institute of Biophysics in Germany, agrees with the findings and
was not surprised by them.

Popp and
his team believe the light from the forehead and the hands pulses out with the
same basic rhythms, but that these pulses become irregular in unhealthy people.
A study he conducted on a muscular sclerosis patient seemed to validate the
theory.

Both he
and Hiramatsu hope future studies will reveal more about human photon
emissions, which could lead to medical diagnosis applications.

6) Invention Secrecy Activity

The Invention Secrecy Act
of 1951 requires the government to impose "secrecy orders" on certain
patent applications that contain sensitive information, thereby restricting
disclosure of the invention and withholding the grant of a patent. Remarkably,
this requirement can be imposed even when the application is generated and
entirely owned by a private individual or company without government
sponsorship or support.

There are several types of
secrecy order which range in severity from simple prohibitions on export (but
allowing other disclosure for legitimate business purposes) up to
classification, requiring secure storage of the application and prohibition of
all disclosure.

At the end of fiscal year
2005, there were 4915 secrecy orders in effect.

The Armed Services Patent
Advisory Board (ASPAB), which performed security review of patent applications
on behalf of the Department of Defense, was terminated in 1997 under section
906 of Public Law 105-85, and its functions were transferred to the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency (DoD Directive 5105.62, 9/30/98, sect. 5.4.5).

7) Powdered metal: The fuel of the future

IF smog-choked streets test
our love for petrol and diesel engines, then rocketing fuel prices and global
warming could end that relationship once and for all. But before you start
saving for the fuel-cell-powered electric car that industry experts keep
promising, there's something you should know. The car of the future will run on
metal.

So
reckons Dave Beach, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee,
who has come up with a plan to transform the way we fuel our engines. Chunks of
metal such as iron, aluminium or boron are the thing, he believes. Turn them
into powder with grains just nanometres across and the stuff becomes highly
reactive. Ignite it, and it releases copious quantities of energy. With a
modified engine and a tankful of metal, Beach calculates that an average saloon
car could travel three times as far as the equivalent petrol-powered vehicle.
Better still, because of the way that this metal nano-fuel burns, it is almost
completely non-polluting. That means no carbon dioxide, no dust, no soot and no
nitrogen oxides. What's more, this fuel is fully rechargeable: treat your spent
nanoparticles with a little hydrogen and the stuff can be burnt again and
again. It could spell the start of a new iron age, and not just for cars. All
kinds of engines, from domestic heating units to the turbines in power
stations, could be adapted to burn metal.

Topping up
your tank with what are essentially iron filings might sound bizarre, but
vehicles can run on all sorts of materials, from methane to coal dust or
gunpowder. So why not metal too? After all, burning a heap of powdered iron
releases almost twice as much energy as the same volume of petrol. And
replacing iron with boron gives you five times as much.

Rockets
already use metal powder as fuel. A dash of aluminium gives extra oomph to the
space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, for instance, and metal powder is
used in rocket-powered torpedoes.

However,
putting metal inside a rocket engine is a very different proposition from using
it in a car engine. When granules of metals such as iron and aluminium come
into contact with air, they become coated with a layer of oxide that must be
removed before the metal can ignite. To kick off combustion in most metals, you
need a heat source with a temperature of at least 2000 °C, which is high enough
to vaporise the oxide layer and expose the bare, reactive metal beneath. That
might be fine for a rocket, but it's not so simple for a car engine. Another
problem is that once the vaporised metal oxide starts to cool, it solidifies
and forms ash. While high temperatures and clouds of ash present no problems in
a one-shot rocket, they create a serious mess for anyone trying to burn metal
powder in an internal combustion engine.

Solomon
Labinov, also a researcher at Oak Ridge, is all too familiar with this problem.
In the early 1980s, while he was the director of an engineering institute in
Kiev, Ukraine, he and his team tried burning micrometre-sized iron particles in
an internal combustion engine. They modified the engine to work at high
temperatures, but found that the oxide ash deposited on the pistons, cylinder
walls and valves, clogging up the engine. They couldn't find a way round the
problem and gave up.

Labinov
subsequently moved to the US, and went to work at Oak Ridge. In 2003 he
suggested to Beach and theorist Bobby Sumpter that they take a fresh look at
the problem, this time using nanoscale particles.

In
experiments they found that iron nanoparticles measuring about 50 nanometres
across ignited far more easily than the larger granules of iron that Labinov
had worked with: heating them to around 250 °C, or even just a spark, could do
the job. And the more the researchers looked, the more they realised that the
nanoparticles behaved in a very different way to their less finely divided
cousins.

Nanoparticles
burn much more easily because their surface area to volume ratio is huge. Iron
reacts very readily with oxygen, so if a lot of it is exposed to air at the
same time, oxidation can generate enough heat to ignite the metal
spontaneously. To prevent this, nanoparticles are usually given a protective
oxide coating during manufacturing. But even with an oxide layer, the huge
surface area of these nanoparticles means that with just a little heat, it is
easy for oxygen molecules to diffuse through and trigger combustion.

One
consequence of this is that once the nanoparticles are ignited by a spark, say,
they burn rapidly and the combustion temperature peaks at around 800 °C - hot
enough to do useful work but not so high as to melt an alloy engine.
And crucially, unlike the micrometre-sized particles, nanoparticles don't burn
hot enough to vaporise or even melt. They just oxidise, leaving a heap of oxide
nanoparticles. And that means no sticking to the walls of the cylinder, and no
clogged engine.

The tidy
heap of iron oxide left over from the combustion process gave Beach an idea: he
realised that it would be easy to convert the iron oxide back into usable fuel.
He heated the burnt fuel to 425 °C in a flow of hydrogen. The iron oxide
particles were reduced to iron, and the hydrogen combined with oxygen to form
water. Now the fuel was ready to burn again.

There
was one more problem to solve if the particles were to have any real potential
as fuel. Individually, nanoparticles burn in a flash, releasing all their heat
in a millisecond or so. But to make the metal fuel useful in a wide range of
engines, the rate of heat production should not be so fast that an engine
cannot deal efficiently with the heat produced. In internal combustion engines,
for example, each burst of combustion can last anywhere between 5 and 20
milliseconds. If heat is released any faster, the fuel is used below its
maximum efficiency.

So the
team attempted to limit how quickly their fuel burnt by pressing the
nanoparticles into larger clusters. The idea was to limit both how fast oxygen
could diffuse into the nanoparticles and how fast heat could flow out of them,
so reducing the rate of heat release.

The
Plan Worked

Beach
and his colleagues found they could create nanoparticle clusters weighing
anything from 1 to 200 milligrams each, and by adjusting their size, shape and
density they could control the burn rate. While single particles would burn in
just milliseconds, the largest clusters could take from 500 milliseconds to two
seconds.

With the
first stage of the research complete, the team now plans to design an engine
that can run on the fuel. It would be relatively easy, Beach believes, to
convert external combustion engines such as the gas turbines that power jet
aircraft and vehicles such as tanks, or even those used to generate electricity
in power stations. These engines might operate on metal fuel without too
much difficulty, he suspects, though they would certainly need
modifications to the fuel-delivery systems, and he would need to find a way to
collect the spent fuel.

Another
option is to use the fuel to power a Stirling engine, an efficient external
combustion engine in which a fluid or gas in a cylinder is alternately cooled
and heated to move a piston (New Scientist, 11 December 1999, p 30). Stirling
engines are used in domestic combined heat and power units, for example, and
for cooling satellites.

When it
comes to cars, a Stirling engine is a possibility: NASA and a number of car manufacturers,
including Ford, have already experimented with Stirling engines designed to
power vehicles. But Beach also hopes it will be possible to use his metal fuel
in an internal combustion engine. A modified diesel engine might be able to
burn nanoparticle powder as a fuel, just as a conventional diesel engine uses a
mist of diesel fuel.

Beach
suggests that metal powder or clusters could be injected into the engine
cylinders from a storage tank, possibly using a jet of air, which could also
supply the oxygen for combustion. A spark plug would trigger ignition and burnt
fuel would be carried from the cylinder by the exhaust gases.

Beach's
team must also find a way to collect that spent fuel. One possibility is
to store it in the fuel canister, with a movable membrane dividing the canister
into two sections, one for fresh and one for spent fuel. The burnt fuel might
be collected using a filter or, since iron oxide powder is ferromagnetic, an
electromagnet. When a driver needed a top-up, the entire canister could be
unclipped and exchanged for a fresh one at a filling station, and the used fuel
would then be recharged.

“Scrapyards
full of old cars could become fuel for the vehicles of tomorrow”

The
result would be an engine similar to a conventional one, but which emits no
carbon dioxide, harmful particulates or even nitrogen oxides. These compounds
usually form in combustion at high temperatures, but Beach has shown that he
can lower temperatures to about 525 °C by varying the size of the clusters.
However, plenty of work is still needed to strike the right balance between
temperature, speed of combustion and engine efficiency.

A
vehicle running on metal fuel should please both drivers and environmental
campaigners. Beach calculates that a fuel tank holding 33 litres of his iron
fuel will power a car engine for the same distance as a 50-litre tank of
conventional petrol or diesel.

Heavy
load

There
are still major drawbacks, however, the most significant of which is weight,
according to Nathan Glasgow, a consultant at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a
think tank in Snowmass, Colorado. Although iron is a compact fuel compared to
hydrogen, it is also extremely heavy, and even though its high energy content
allows you to almost halve the size of a typical 50-litre fuel tank and still
get the same energy out, a tank of fuel would weigh about 100 kilograms - more
than twice as heavy as the petrol it replaces. And because the spent fuel is
kept on board, unlike the polluting by-products of conventional fuel, this
weight won't decrease as you drive - you must always lug the full load around.
The weight of fuel will also add to the cost of shipping it back and forth to
recycling facilities.

David
Keith, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, is
satisfied that the technology itself is sound, but believes there are
fundamental difficulties with iron as a fuel. Even if everything works
perfectly, he says, the fuel is simply too heavy to be really useful.

So for
the ultimate in clean, green driving, perhaps hydrogen really is the answer.
After all, it packs over 12 times as much energy per kilogram as iron.

Beach is
unconvinced. Of course hydrogen is important, he says, but you don't want to be
filling your tank with it. "What we're saying is that metal fuel is a more
convenient, safer, and more practical energy carrier than hydrogen." And
it's true that engineers are still struggling to find ways to store hydrogen at
densities high enough to make it a practical alternative to petrol. In
contrast, metal fuel is stable at room temperature, so it is easy to store and
transport. "We've got a solid at ambient pressure. So moving it around on
freight cars or storing it for long periods of time isn't a problem," says
Beach.

Besides,
there's a potentially more serious problem with hydrogen-powered vehicles that
the use of metal would sidestep. The water produced by hydrogen fuel cells is
usually just allowed to escape into the atmosphere. Some climate scientists are
concerned that the huge amounts of water vapour released by millions of
hydrogen-powered cars and trucks would accelerate global warming.

Recycling
metal oxide fuel with hydrogen also produces water vapour, but it would be
generated at large recycling units rather than by vehicles out on the road.
This means that it would be simple to collect the water and recycle it -
perhaps even using electrolysis to convert it back into hydrogen.

It might
even be possible to dispense with hydrogen altogether. If carbon sequestration
becomes viable, carbon monoxide could be used to recycle spent metal fuel,
creating carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide is a common by-product of coal
gasification - one of the technologies likely to become more important as the
coal industry attempts to reduce its contribution to global warming. Use this
carbon monoxide directly for recycling fuel and the industry would get more
useful energy out of its coal than before.

Beach
has even got some solutions to the weight issue. Use aluminium nanoparticles
rather than iron, for example, and you get about four times as much energy per
kilogram. With boron you'd get almost six times as much. Of course,
since these metals cost more than iron, the fuel would be more expensive in the
first place. Aluminium, for instance, costs about 15 times as much as iron.

Clearly
it is very early days for metal power. The Oak Ridge researchers are still
applying for grants to build a prototype engine, and Beach has yet to carry out
a full analysis to find out whether his fuel could be cost-effective. The team
also plans a series of experiments to optimise the size of its nanoparticles,
as well as to investigate the best way to package, inject and collect the stuff
in a real engine. And even if their work succeeds, who is going to buy the
first metal-powered car when there's nowhere to fuel it, and who is going to
build a network of fuel stations until there are cars to fill?

At the
very least, metal-burning engines are another entry in the list of
alternatives to oil. And whatever happens, Beach's remarkable idea
does raise one interesting possibility. In the past, energy magnates have
earned billions from coal, oil and gas fields. In the future, they could grow
rich from scrapyards full of yesterday's cars, by transforming them into fuel
for the vehicles of tomorrow.

[22][22]
Professor Konstantin Meyl sells a “Demo Set” that is a miniature dual dome like
Tesla patent ‘576, a wireless longitudinal wave demonstration kit, available at
http://www.k-meyl.de/Demo-Set/body_demo-set.html (Enter this link at
www.freetranslation.com for English).